Works by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin have been dismissed as no better than a tea bag.
Designer Stephen Bayley launched an attack on the artists as he opened a new exhibition.
He has joined forces with photographer Barry Lategan for his first show since he walked out on the Dome.
"Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst have abandoned beauty and embraced aesthetic outrage," said Bayley, who had a bust-up with Peter Mandelson over the Dome's contents.
"The public has to find it elsewhere. In the modern world beauty left the artist's studio and went to live in the supermarket or the factory. You find it in everyday objects as banal as a pyramid teabag or a paperclip and as exalting as an aircraft."
His new show Funny Shape, Perfect For The Job, explores everyday objects.
It includes a Coke bottle, pyramid tea bag, paper clip and the Yale key.
The exhibition also features newly commissioned photographs by Lategan.
Funny Shape, Perfect For The Job is on show at Mission in Notting Hill, London, and will tour the North of England.
"Designer Says Artists' Works are 'No Better Than a Tea Bag'".
Available: pda.ananova.net/entertainment/story/sm_406675.html?menu=entertainment.story (September 24, 2001).
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